The Pause Before The Trigger's Pulled
by Pandastacia
Summary: Tessa/Will- Between them lie many battles & some were even won, but they have yet to win the war with each other. -Drabble series.
1. Herald

**Dedication:** to the times it feels all right & Florence + the Machine.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I do not own the things you've seen before (generally with a copyright symbol). The italics in particular are verbatim from _Clockwork Angel_ by Cassandra Clare. I do not own it, just the framework vignette around them.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Uh, don't take _Clockwork Prince_ into account for this one – I plan on reading it tomorrow!  
><strong>NotesB:<strong> First time I've done this fandom.

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><p>His fingers waver around her wrist for a second before they're gone.<p>

At least, that's what she thinks, but she's not quite sure as he draws them away before she has the chance to look down.

Her eyebrows furrow as she curses him and her insides for practicing their somersaults.

It's one of those rare mostly-sunny days in London and the four of them are on the roof. Sophie stands on the other side of Jem, talking with the strange kind of delight that Tessa can't bring herself to speak with. He's a little closer than she remembers he had been the last time she'd glanced his way, his left elbow brushing her waist when he turns to look at the other brunette.

Nothing uncomfortable, especially in comparison to the pale shadow on her left.

After their last conversation on the roof, she had expected him to stand next to Jem, or Sophie, who was at the other end and the furthest from her.

The barren warlock.

His eyes are focused on a spot right above the sun and she is almost dazzled.

Almost.

She used to be the fool; now she's just blind.

As she looks down at the bustling streets, where little street urchins slip their hands into purses for apple red wallets, she wonders if that's why she's so… fascinated by Will. He hardly makes sense, his reasoning a matter of his own invention. This mystery unto a human angel-bred, he slips himself into her skin better than she wears it.

Frustrating.

Sometimes, she thinks how easy it would be to dive through him, take on his identity and wear him until he makes sense and she forgets himself.

She just doesn't know if she'd know how to find her way back.

"Tessa."

He never calls her _Tess_ anymore, and perhaps it's because he doesn't want her demon taint gripping him.

She's hesitant to blame him.

Will's fingers beat a tattoo into her palm, not even sputtering when she faces him, a new delicate smile carefully patched together on her face. Jem's slim hand rests in her right, curling it around her like armor. She doesn't know what Will asked, but… refusing him has always been the most fun option.

"Yes, there is."

She's just too tired for it at the moment.

The way he looks at her, blue eyes that spear her like the sunlight through thin London clouds, makes her think he knows she just answered his question.

Just not the one he had just asked.

"_Jem says you lie to make yourself look bad," she said. "And perhaps that is true, or perhaps he simply wishes to believe that about you. But there is no reason or excuse for cruelty like this."_

_For a moment he looked actually unnerved, as if she had truly startled him. The expression was gone in an instant, like the shifting shape of a cloud. "Then there is nothing more for me to say, is there?"_

He still manages to own her.


	2. Unfaithful Hearts

**Dedication:** to "Strong Enough" & Emily for talking to me about the nature of love (which will be applied in a separate drabble!).  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I do not own any of the copyrighted material (i.e. characters from The Infernal Devices).  
><strong>Notes:<strong> I should start this off by saying that _The Pause Before The Trigger's Pulled_ will be a series of vignettes. I have yet to decide whether they'll all take place in the same verse or whether, from this point on, they're different deviations from the end of _Clockwork Prince_. This will be answered in the future.  
><strong>NotesB:<strong> I finished _Clockwork Prince_ really early this morning. To me, it clarified several points that make my theories for _Clockwork Princess_ much more likely. I really do think one of two things: somehow Will & Tessa end up together (whether Jem dies or their feelings for each other will be revealed first is up in the air, but I do think they will both happen. Then again, maybe there is a cure for the demon drugs.) or Will will end up with Tatianna. Why? Because of the genetic color combination in the Lightwood family in the future (though, if Will/Tessa happens, my bet is that Cecily ends up with Gabrial).

Enough theorizing – time to get on with the writing, right?

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><p>She has taken to avoiding the drawing room lately, he's noticed.<p>

It's the kind of steady avoidance that makes his mind bring up a picture of her pale face and those wide gray eyes, her lips bit in determined concentration-

He derails the thought as soon as the word "lips" and hers – parted and a pale pink, with a little bit of tempting tongue behind it - start dancing in his mind.

It's a dangerous way to go.

The most disastrous bit, of course, is how clueless she is as to how seductive she could be. If this was her power without her dark-haired mind actually putting effort into it, she will destroy him before he could have time to say, "Take me."

Not that he will ever say that, of course.

Maybe make _her_ say it…

Will shakes his head, cursing when a strand of black hair made its way into his eye.

The things she does to him.

He thinks that's why he asked her to meet him up here, in their special place. She's his demon drug, leeching him of his blood before filling him up to the brim with its poisoned salvation. It's wrong and bad and it does the job, sending him off on a high greater than that of the ifrit powder he had taken before her brother died.

Whether the cure or the disease will kill him first, he doesn't know, but he's scraping the barrel with her now.

She sits across from him in a comfortably worn green armchair. Since Jessamine had been taken to the City of Bones, Tessa has found her own things to wear, he's noticed. No more letting out the bodice of all of the dresses; gone are the flowery and proper mundane dresses of the old days.

Here is a simple cream dress that emphasizes the simple streamline of her form, stiff as her arms are. Mouth pursed into a thin line, she stares at him with that inquisitive look that just wants answers. She looks even more serious than usual, though it's eclipsed by how tense her shoulders are.

He wants to rub her shoulders till they're loose and she says his name in that gasp she used on Benedict Lightwood's balcony.

All she gives him is a clear look at the jade pendant resting on top of the Mechlun lace of her dress and his heart twists.

Will has taken to wondering if, every time he sees that _thing_ and his chest feels like it's being gripped tightly, his _parabatai_ can feel it, too. Jem had mentioned it off hand once, that when Will had gone missing into the ifrit den, he'd felt that something had happened.

Does he know his sin?

"Will."

Looking up from the pendant, he stares into the blasted girl's eyes. Her face is flushed, probably from his intent stare. Shadows from the flames flicker over her face and he has this insane urge to kiss her.

_She's _Jem's_, _he tells himself sternly. _Get ahold of yourself because that ship has more than sailed_.

_And you can only blame yourself for being a nitwit and caring for someone else's happiness more than your own._

"Yes, Tessa?"

He has to remind himself that she is Jem's Tessa now, not Will's Tess. Through it, maybe he can talk himself down and out of love with the shadow world's wild card.

"Are you simply planning on looking at me like I just grew a tail or is there a purpose in you telling me to meet you here?" Her London gray eyes are honestly curious and curiously honest; so much so that Will looks past the grate into the fireplace to her right.

"I keep thinking... if we could have had it all, would you have me?" The unsayable words are tacked on to the back of his throat, stuck there by some kind of human magic or foolery, so he just smiles.

"You've been avoiding being alone with me for a while," is all he says. Reaching back, he takes out a book he had picked out of the library. "Thought you'd like this, and we could bond over it. Even if…"

Will bites back bitter words at the last second, instead giving her what he hopes is a crooked grin.

"… our friendship has changed a little bit. We're both close to Jem and it would be a pity if we didn't get along."

His Tes- Tessa gives him a small little smile, but there's something darkening her eyes – something she isn't telling him, but he's wary of getting his hopes up.

"Thanks." Her voice is quiet. "I'd like that."

This is how, in the shade of a looming matrimony and hidden feelings, they rebuild their friendship and dodge everything they cannot explain.

They hide because they never meant any of this.

They hide from the world.

They hide from each other.

But, most of all, they hide from themselves because, if they convince themselves they're lying, they'll be telling each other the truth.


	3. Buried

**Dedication:** To books & to all of the adventures you'll always want, but haven't had yet beyond your pillow.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> Disclaimed.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Still hypothesizing like mad.  
><strong>NotesB:<strong> I've decided these are all in the same verse. Eventually, I'll have to figure out how to order them, but I'll label them if they fit inbetween or before previous drabbles.  
><strong>NotesC: <strong>Confession: I'm a lazy reader – the kind of person who reads because she loves the plot & the little details & could care more about the quality of writing. I read because I love it versus for any kind of substance (unless I'm reading something serious or for school). But when I read for leisure, I'll just enjoy it unless something stands out plot-wise. Does that make me a bad reader? I don't know. I really don't.

Just something I've been thinking about, recently.

**WARNING: Dead baby. Continue reading if that doesn't bother you too much. It won't be detailed, but it will be **_**there**_**. Partially inspired by an incident in the news.**

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><p>Will and Tessa had been carelessly wandering a bit past her favorite bookshop on a drizzly Friday morning when they came across the flowerbox.<p>

Half-heartedly attached to the windowsill of a window looking out onto a dark alley, it is a hearty green full of dry soil with the head of what looked like someone's broken doll protruding from it. The humanoid toy had been hastily shoved into it, just the face of a coin pressed into its crown.

But it isn't a doll.

"A warlock baby," Will says. Tessa doesn't look at him, but she feels his hand grip her shoulder, trying to pull her away, but she can't help resisting as she stares at the body with gross fascination.

Its face is a bruise. With its eyes closed, she can't see if it had cat eye slits like Magnus's or all black without any of the whites. There's dirt loosely packed around its back, clumsily hiding any evidence of wings or extra arms. Easily remedied, of course – at least, it could be, but, as her stomach rolls, she doesn't feel it… necessary.

She doubts the dark-haired Shadowhunter by her side felt any differently.

Anyway, the skin around the coin is decidedly green enough to lead her to agree with Will's conclusion.

"Tessa." He tugs more urgently on her shoulder, probably afraid that some of the mundane constables will catch them near an obviously deceased corpse, but she continues to resist. When she glances at his face with her jaw set, she sees his eyes. The event isn't a shock or anything he hadn't seen before so much as it just _is_. Something he has probably seen on a number of rounds, months after some naïve human woman cavorted with a demon and the "unfortunate" consequences leading to the disposal of the yowling results of their indiscretions.

"Let's go back to the Institute."

"It's…" Unable to find the words to describe the scene, she settles on her knees, careful to clear the green skirt of her dress out of her way. Tessa can't see the baby with her head a meter closer to the ground, but the image is still burned into her mind and her eyes burn at the thought. Awful doesn't quite cover the way her chest was tightening up and how difficult it was to breathe and tragedy cannot describe a baby's death properly.

It has more to do with the way she actively tries not to imagine another baby in the flowerbox, her mouth full of dry, old soil. A pale newborn that had looked just like every other baby out there, but innately capable of changing faster than the legendary Proteus himself. An immutable person in all, but…

But she doesn't stop the images because it could just as easily have been her.

Or her own, if she could bear one.

Even with the jade pendant thudding against her collarbone, she can picture the child – more human and angelic than not with her dark brown hair. Its feathery curls would mar the earthiness with its softness and vitality as it waved its fists in the air to grab at strands of her hair.

And such beautiful blue eyes…

Suddenly rising to her feet, Tessa turns to look at Will, who looks taken aback, but not without understanding and maybe a little part guilt, though that might have brought the comprehension with it.

Her heart seeks to claw its way out of her chest. Why couldn't he have looked at her like that before, before he'd said those words? They are on their way to mending the pieces of what had been half of a friendship, weren't they? It is a different creature now, but they, like everyone else are different people than they had been, people with a new future ahead of them…

She ignores that feeling and, instead, turns in the direction of the Institute. She refuses to think on that, let alone ponder how the warlock baby had come to that particular flowerbox, dead.

Burying things only worked for so long, she has learned. It is always so dearly tempting to leave everything nasty about yourself underground…

But things fight their way to the surface to survive, and secrets – God damned hellions of fire and emotions – are no different. If anything, they're more eager. Tessa isn't fool enough to believe that her feelings will stay buried and unknown to any outside of herself, but she will do what she can to cover them up as long as possible.

Will is walking by her side, as silent as she is. His eyes are focused ahead of them and he nudges her with his shoulder when she almost misses their turn.

She grimly wonders as they walked up to the door of the Institute, with a twist of her lips in unusual pragmatism, if he is burying himself as much as she is.


	4. Tempestuous

**Dedication:** To the ones who inspire the importance of words.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> Disclaimed once again.  
><strong>Notes:<strong> I'm glad you all liked _Buried_. :) Now, onto this one, which came to me while I was trying to sleep two nights ago. Plot bunnies - the main cause of insomnia (Not really).

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><p>Tessa had seen many a nice girls standing by the schoolyard back in America. They cluster in a group, chatting about one more scarf they'd knit the night before as their fingers absentmindedly tug at the one around their neck. The apples on the teacher's desk come from the tree planted just a few feet from their front stoop. Never trouble, they look over the younger siblings during recess, but shyly leave the older boys alone.<p>

They're nice enough, she had supposed.

When she would see them at the grocery store a few months or years later, skirts mischievously swaying a little closer to their knees and hanging over one guy or another with a lit cigarettes, all she could think was that some girls are only nice when they don't know anything else.

She was a nice girl.

Maybe that's why spending time in the training room with Will, his mouth next to her ear as he guides her left hand back till the bowstring is taut, makes her body quiver like her hand when Will isn't lending her some of his expertise and strength. It's not that he tries anything, but she can't help the strain in her shoulders when he's mentioned in the same room, even when he tells her to loosen up or she'll pull something.

His breath glances across her ear and she starts, releasing the arrow. It flies straight and false, a foot away from the target.

"Sorry," Tessa says, letting her hands drop to her side as she turns to face him, "I got distracted."

"It's okay." Will sighs before taking a step back so they can look at each other. It's possible when his dark blue eyes aren't squinting at her with faint exasperation. His thumb and index finger rub his nose. "Let's try this again."

She wants to ask him what's the point of repeating the same thing over and over again when nothing had changed. He tends to avoid eye-to-eye contact, but never seemed to tire of training her, especially when it meant being close to her.

Was it harder to avoid someone when they knew how you feel than if they remained oblivious?

Will can speak of the former and Tessa the latter, she thinks, but it is not really the kind of thing she wants to share, despite her curiosity.

Nevertheless, he allows her to position herself and he stands on the other side of the bow as she stands as still as her trembling will let her. He is a bit distracting; something he knows yet is ignorant of. It's confusing, she supposes, but he doesn't think she notices him, how his body is clad in tight yet limber Shadowhunter gear that hides the strength in his upper body while emphasizing his broad shoulders and narrow hips.

It's his eyes that she feels so dearly.

Gently, he tugs the bow from her hands.

"You need to do _this_," he murmurs, as he manipulates her fingers on her right hand so that they lie on top of each other before curling them together. She feels the callouses on his fingers as he does so and cannot help shivering.

They are both looking at her palm intently before she realizes how close their faces are to each other at approximately the same moment he does. Tessa feels her cheeks heat and watches as his eyes narrow.

They immediately jump to her lips before back at her eyes. She sees something in them that looks like the desire she'd seen on the night he confessed as well as a… reluctant restraint.

Her own eyes aren't paying much attention to his; they've zeroed in on his lips and she has an irrational impulse to return to the night in the attack when they'd kissed. His mouth on hers in all its fiery passion…

Her body shudders.

But Jem –

Gravity disobeys all reason and propriety as the pull between them ends.

There's nothing in her that is capable of denying the lazy softness that steals across them as the tension that had been around them snaps. He tastes like strawberries with the bite of a shot of brandy on her tongue. It is intoxication at its very finest, and so she is sucked in with a moan that she can barely suppress. Her arms twined around his neck, Tessa tries to press herself into Will until they are chest to chest and their dark Shadowhunters uniform is indistinguishable.

She dares to take their suppressed chasteness a bit further and traces the seam between his lips before nipping at them. His mouth opens and his tongue slides past hers. Tracing along the line of her upper teeth, it retreats to the recess of his mouth before he sucks lightly on her lower lip. Hands rest securely on her hips as she finds her back against the wall while her own are threaded into hair darker than twilight.

He breathes in with his rusty yet familiar, "Tess," and she surrenders to the heat.

Reality impatiently yanks her back to Earth when the door creaks open with the last person she wants to see standing there in the doorway.

Jem is all dead, disbelieving black eyes and flat silver hair as the two of them stand there next to the wall, frozen in one horribly beautiful moment.

Love tastes like betrayal, only sweeter.

She is, she believes, just another one of those nice girls who hadn't meant it.

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><p><strong>NotesB:<strong> Uh… kissing scenes are not my forte. For a lot of really good reasons. Or maybe just one. I don't really know…


	5. Irresolute

Indiscretions

**Dedication: **To Emily. Even if you'll never read this because you don't read Clare, thank you. & thank you to Rin, for reading these & speculating with me. & thank you for everyone who kept asking me to update; I finally got it (apologies, as well, for the lateness).

**Disclaimer: **I do not own any of the references to TID, including the characters.

The day after Jem had taken the jade pendant back, Will finally comes across his _parabatai_.

Part accident, part on purpose – _casu consulto_, in Latin, though not quite accurate. After all, Jem probably hasn't meant to speak to him for years, but Herondales are quite stubborn and Will had every intention to conclude this.

To conclude, he thinks to himself, is such a strangely daunting concept, even though it is one he had never really considered before. Conclusions are dead ends, and, in this particular instance, ambiguous. Perhaps they can end this mess without losing each other in something of a patchwork job, but there is an equally sizable chance that this will shred their friendship permanently. Love is both a needle and a blade, stitching and strengthening where it isn't ripping what is left into nothing but dust.

He can already see the tatters in the fabric of their years.

"Jem."

"William."

He winces. "You're still upset, I see."

Will has never seen Jem really glare before. Even when he fights, his eyes are open with no hint of dark anger, fluid in his movements like a dancer.

Jem doesn't sulk, he knows, and, truth be told, it isn't a time for that. It is a time for anger, and considering his passion-love for Tessa, there is the potential for a rain of fire. He can see it there, in Jem's eyes, like silver mercury.

"Considering I found myself engaged until yesterday evening, having both a friend and someone like a brother, I must ask if you really think I should have fully recovered and be in such good humor so as to forgive you."

Without waiting for a response, he turns, his silver hair gliding on the wind of his quick movement as he makes to go back the way he had originally come before anyone can stop him, but Will is _fast_. Fastest Shadowhunter in many generations, and he knows that.

He has never actually tried to use it against Jem before, though.

Jem is faster than he has always let on, slipping his wrist and hand through Will's fingers. A human whisp.

Maybe he would've continued on his way, Will thinks with a hint of sadness, except for what he says next.

"I've loved Tessa since before the ball at de Quincy's."

That's the thing that makes Jem stop halfway through the shadow of the corridor.

It's weird talking to his back; just as odd as it had felt to love and care behind him as well. The last several months have been filled with more subversive actions than he cared to remember. When has this become lies, is Will's miserable thought though he shakes it away.

After all, Jem hadn't been deceptive in the least.

Jem was the cuckold, and, despite Will's reluctant feelings of resentment, Will has never had any ground to stand on in the moral battle.

"I never said anything because… Well, it wasn't an option at the time. You know about the curse – it applied to everyone. All of you, even stupid Jessamine, are my family, and to love you seemed to be capable of bringing doom to you all. Then, when I thought I was free…"

They both remember the jade pendant, and Jem's arm twitches. Will wonders, stuffing his hands into his own pockets, if Jem is still holding onto it.

"We were meant to crash and burn, weren't we?" Will gives a bitter laugh that he feels throb somewhere between his lungs. "We can't really have each other because we're stuck in this circle, where we can only have one of each other, like one of those love triangles in the penny romances at one of those mundane grocery stores. How are we supposed to-?"

Will breaks off as Jem continues away from him.

Sighing, he looks into the darkness with a yearning to follow, but knows that will do more ill than good right now. It'll take time and another love for things to go anywhere near where they used to be.

.

.

.

Will finds Tessa leaning over the ledge on the roof. Her angel dangles low with the chain riding up near the hairline at her nape. From time to time, it swings, skimming the tip of her nose before resuming its pendulum-like activity.

It creates the smile that's not on her face.

He wants nothing more than to walk up to her and celebrate her freedom, but it's not exactly freedom, is it? Will's not certain she'll see it as anything but a different kind of slavery, going from one Shadowhunter to the other. They know their feelings for one another, but…

Maybe it's not the right time.

"Will?"

Tessa doesn't hold his hand, instead choosing just to linger behind him as he faces the staircase. He can feel a hint of warmth from her breath, even from afar, on such a chilly day.

When he turns his head to look at her, he knows she is just as unsure about where things are going to go.

It's not a time for kisses and sweet promises. There is to be no celebrating upon the apparent requited love they were subject to. Emotionally stranded from a third of their trio upon surrendering to their feelings for each other, they are threaded together even stronger while the needle severes Jem from them both.

They had always been painfully aware of the consequences.

Could their love hold them together through the coming storm from within?

Could there be forgiveness for unleashing it?

Is true forgiveness strong enough? Was Jem that strong?

As they stand there, looking at each other with hands centimeters from joining, Will wonders what is forgiveness between friends who will only lose upon gaining.


End file.
